Starting HRT in early menopause may reduce women’s risk of Alzheimer’s
Estrogen reductions during menopause can have cognitive effects
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Hormon therapy for hormones (HRT) within five years of the start of menopause seems to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. However, starting it later in life seems to have the opposite effect, suggesting that the time of HOs influences the way it affects the brain.
Women have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to men, especially after crossing menopause. This may be due to the decline in hormonal estrogen, which regulates energy production and inflammation in the brain. As such, HRT has become a potential tool to mitigate the risk of Alzheimer’s after menopause. But studies on its effectiveness have shown mixed results.
Thus, FNU Vaibhav at Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences in India and his colleagues analyzed the implications of Alzheimer’s disease in 53 studies, totaling more than 8.4 million people. All participants were post-menopause.
They found in randomized controlled trials, the participants on HRT had an average risk of 38% higher to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those who did not do so. But this was not the case with observation studies, which showed a 22% risk of Alzheimer’s disease among those who take HRT.
Vaibhav, who presented these results on September 15 at a meeting of the Neurological American Association of Maryland, says that the striking contrast is probably summed up at age. Most participants in randomized controlled trials were 65 or over, while those of observation studies tended to be younger, he said. A more in -depth analysis showed, on average, those who started HRT within five years of menopause presented a risk of 32% Alzheimer’s disease through the follow -up periods which varied from five years in some studies to a person’s life to death in others.
“This menopausic transition is in fact a neurological transition,” explains Roberta Brinton at the University of Arizona, which was not involved in research. As estrogen levels drop, the brain must find new ways to produce energy. Some evidence suggest that the brain can be cannibalize, using important compounds to maintain the brain function as fuel, potentially causing neurodegeneration. Initaring HRT during menopause or shortly after can stop this quarter of work, explains Brinton. But if the brain has already made this transition, it can be too late for HRT to have an effect, she said.
“We need more studies to discover the solution to this confusion,” says Vaibhav. Without a clearer understanding of the effects of HRT, “women could miss the advantages, or women could be in danger,” he said.
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